Batgung

"Tai Pan" & "Noble House"?

I guess they were fun reads, when I was in my teens. But, then I read them again in my 20s and was struck by how unattractive all the characters were: anger, envy, greed, lust, & pride. The only missing out of the Big 7 were gluttony & sloth ;). And the *leaden* dialogue.

I also found that when Clavell did "p.o.v" of his characters (especially women characters) they were very unrealistic.

Good points
* Description of the bank run in Mong Kok
* Fire on the floating restauarant in Aberdeen
* Some decsription of water shortage
* My introduction to the concept of "f.u." money

If you want a pot-boiler, I would recommend Robert Elegant's "Dynasty" instead.

These books I recommend & put out for my visitors.

1) The World of Lily Wong, etc. - I have a complete set of the published comics - very enjoyable for my visitors (although out-of-date now)

Non-fiction:

Hong Kong / by Jan Morris

Hong Kong: the Colony that Never Was / by Alan Birch [nice pictures]

Post Impressions/ by the SCMP [lots of nice photos covering HK from 1903 to 2003)

Hong Kong / The Lonely Planet (so they can get a handle on all the different areas and explore on their own).

Fiction:
Hiroshima Joe / by Martin Booth
The Iron Tree / by Martin Booth

- These books are both set in HK in the 1950s. I read Booth's memoir, and found that these books were more evocative. They spoiled me for his memoir.

Hiroshima Joe was a British officer who survives the fall of HK and is a POW. After working on Kai Tak, he is sent to a POW camp in Japan, outside Hiroshima. It shows him and HK 1940- ~1953.

The Iron Tree is told from the POV of an ex-priest who survived the Boxer Rebellion in China, lost his faith (or most of it) and is now an old man living in Jordan/Yau Ma Tei, giving Cantonese lessons to a foreign kid and doing voice overs.

THE LAMEST HONG KONG BOOK
I spoke well of "Dynasty" above. It was a fun take on the Ho-Tung family, but he also wrote one of the worst things I eve read.
"Last Year in Hong Kong" - avoid at all cost.

The Chameleon Press also publishes books by HK people about HK and Asia.

Hi Mr. B,

Here's some more books - memoirs, etc.

1) Feeling the Stones: remininscences by David Akers Jones (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 2004)

2) The Li Dynasty: Hong Kong Aristocrats / by Frank Ching. (Hong Kong:Oxford U Press, 1999)

3) Shouting at the Mountain: A Hong Kong Story of Love and Commitment / by Elsie and Andrew Tu ( Hong Kong: Cameleon Press, 2004).
- Elsie & Andrew were both social activists in the 1960s-present. Elsie is now rather more pro-Beijing & anti-pan-democrat than one would expect her story.

Review here: http://www.asianreviewofbooks.com/arb/article.php?article=478

4) Stanley: Behind Barbed Wire / Jean Gittins (Hong Kong: HKU Press, 1982)
- memoir of being a daughter of Sir Ho Tung & growing up in HK in the 1920-30's and surviving the Stanley Internment camp.

Novels:

1) An Insular Possession / by Timothy Mo (London: Chatto & Windus, 1986)
- novel set in 1840s & about the 1st Opium war. The writing style fits the topic.

2) The Monkey King / Timothy Mo (Boston: Faber & Faber 1988, c. 1978)
- novel set in 1950's Hong Kong; main character, Wallace, is Mecanese and marries into the family of an incredibly stingy patriarch in Hong Kong. Wallace is a bit like Sun Wu Kong and the novel is funny and overblown and in some ways accurate.

3) White Ghost Girls / Kate Greenway (New York: Black Cat, 2006)
- I haven't read this one yet, but a friend said that she liked it. Two western girls living in HK in 1967 while their dad is a photo-journalist in Vietnam.

Reader IDJ suggests:

Consider for your readers the trilogy, Ancestral Images, More Ancestral Images and Ancestral Images Again. All hardback slim volumes by Dr Hugh Baker and published by the SCMP in 1979, 1980 & 1981. They are based on his articles that appeared in the SCMP between 1977 and 1979, covering some of the strange things that puzzle gwailos in HK and explain oddities and local customs seen in the NT in the 1970s, although the environment there has changed somewhat since then.

Also Hong Kong Ways & Byways-A miscellany of trivia by Eric Cumine published by Belongers’ Publications Ltd in 1981. Eric Cumine was a well-known architect who designed many building in HK including the original Harbour City complex in Canton Road.

No doubt all these volumes are still be available in the public libraries.

Sweet Mandarin by Helen Tse has a bit about their lives in HK in a very hard scrabble time.  It puts a lot in perspective (and in this case the Chinese perspective)